Proto Automata - A Game Development DAO Offering Holders Creative Power and Profit Share; Catalyst Outputs Built to Model, Test, and Springboard Open Source Gaming DAO Management Tools for ADAO

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Proto Automata has the potential to deliver lean solutions for a number of DAO shortcomings in the Cardano ecosystem, particularly regarding decentralized gaming.

The Problem

A large percentage of the most popular products developed using blockchain technology put a focus on wealth accumulation above almost anything else, save a potentially novel utility or charitable mission that a singular collection's sales revenue can provide in a short-term timescale. This has made for radically positive changes in a handful of very smart (and very lucky) people's lives, but many of the ways in which people are interacting with blockchain-based products are making better arguments for trade regulators than proving valuable product use cases for the technology in global markets.

Despite the allure of fast gains from quick flips, it is not uncommon to hear cryptocurrency & NFT holders speak very highly of gamified digital assets, online gaming, and ways to use blockchain technology in place of avaricious centralized monetization practices from "AAA" private game development studios. Cardano's NFT protocols in particular provide seemingly infinite potential when it comes to digital asset management in gaming platforms, but running a game development studio requires an entirely different organizational structure than the typical NFT projects we've seen getting the most attention thus far. Bigger studios are also spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing the most immersive virtual worlds on the market, which is a budget scale that requires a much higher adoption rate from a much larger user base making much smaller investments than typical NFT customers.

The Solution

Utilizing agile development practices, Proto Automata will test an innovative game development model that not only takes great advantage of Cardano's unique potential for digital asset management in games, it also takes a fresh approach to the legal DAO incorporation election in the US (to be registered in Wyoming) and provides a gaming-utility-driven user experience in a robust NFT product family.

The DAO as a US business will be entirely owned by its parent corporation Metapproach Industries Inc., NFT sales will fund the studio's game development, and profit from the games will be accessible to NFT holders.

The SEC acknowledges a "Regulation Crowdfunding" policy that allows US-based non-accredited investors to make small investments in crowdfunded startups without having to meet strict fiduciary requirements. Of course there are certain regulations and tax policies that the SEC expects US citizens to comply with, which Proto Automata will publish clearly in onboarding documentation; these regulations include maximum investments (the greater of $2,500 or 5% of annual income within a year) and in some cases holders are not allowed to sell their shares for 1 year (1 year being the minimum development timeline for the first game, so sales disbursements would not be realized within that timeframe).

The first NFT collections produced by Proto Automata will grant different levels of membership in the DAO, as well as delegate different levels of voting power and profit share for the first game developed by the DAO. The core concept for DAO activities revolves around voting on creative decisions and sharing sales revenue from the finished product, so holders have a collective interest to develop quality content. With these goals in mind, the long-term development timeline will proceed as follows:

Professional game developers including members of the original Unbounded.Earth dev team will produce a pixel-style Metroidvania game with an engaging gameplay loop full of fun mechanics.
Project management boards will be made available to DAO members to track development progress via the Aha! product management suite.
Different tiers of NFTs that amount to different weights of influence will be released in sequence. Each tier should release 1 month after the last with a larger supply and lower price than the previous tier.
With every new NFT tier released, holders will submit their concepts for a new gameplay element prompted by the development team. At the same time, voting will open for holders to select the best submission from the previous tier's game direction prompt.
Demo versions of the game will be released as it is developed so DAO members can play along with the development process.
The dev team will release other NFT collections with gaming utility throughout the development timeline. These NFTs will interact directly with the game.
Once completed, two versions of the game will be made available to the public. One will offer a variety of blockchain-enhanced customization options and collectibles. The other will be stripped down to just a great single-player game, and published on conventional Web2 marketplaces like Steam.

Our goal is to fund six months of runway to develop the tools and infrastructure needed to launch a project of this scale successfully. Our team is asking for a bare minimum to build this company because the sales potential is great, but also because we believe we can empower other players in the space to succeed in their ambitious projects with the help of the tools we develop and publish open source to ADAO's toolset. A rising tide raises all ships.

The Audience

Proto Automata should appeal to both NFT collectors and gamers, from casual to hardcore players.

Cardano's innovative NFT protocols will allow us to release a variety of tokens with different utilities, including access to WebGL demos within NFT platforms, NFT customization, in-game asset customization to match your custom NFTs, and so much more. DAO members will have priority access to non-governance NFTs that facilitate some of these products - simple digital goods that should be treated as regular NFTs without the added securities connotation of profit share. These tokens should be considered "programmatic sales", as established the ruling from SEC v. Ripple on July 13th, 2023, as opposed to "institutional sales" that might include profit sharing utility from DAO member tokens (which will be addressed using the SEC's regulation crowdfunding policy, as previously stated).

All of these blockchain features aside, even with an amazing game there is still a risk that a large portion of the gaming market would be disinterested simply because the products take such great advantage of blockchain-based technology, unfortunately. This is why the end-goal developing Proto Automata's first awesome feature-rich Metroidvania game is to publish a "vanilla" version that has been completely stripped of blockchain features to conventional Web2 gaming platforms, like Steam, with a marketing budget to promote it. This is a sneaky way to introduce players who found a game they genuinely love to the great story behind its community driven development.

Further down the road, there is a particularly valuable potential to onboard gamers into the Cardano ecosystem once other Metapproach projects are funded as well, such as an account-bound wallet to hold assets for users who want to shop for digital goods we might develop for our games with other currencies like USD, which we have also proposed in Catalyst Fund10's "Building on NMKR" challenge.

The Proof

We believe this experiment in DAO governance has great potential to set several needed examples in our industries. DAO members deserve equitable returns on investments they can clearly and openly report without fear of violating federal law. Gamers deserve ownership of the digital goods they acquire. Fans deserve influence in their favorite franchises. Of course everyone deserves great games to play! Proto Automata can achieve all of this while nurturing a meaningful DAO community.

We ask that you sincerely consider our vision and the tools we can offer DAOs on Cardano when we request enough funding for a six month runway to launch our first game development campaign. With this funding we will develop the tools we need to do the job right, including but not limited to:

The legal infrastructure to establish this concept with viable, sustainable organization
A platform that allows members to submit ideas and vote on them efficiently
NFT metadata standards that allow for robust customization and other forms of engagement
A comprehensive product management environment
A demo game to showcase our development and design skills

Our parent corporation Metapproach Industries Inc. will then publish these outputs their partner's open source platform at https://www.TheADAO.io/, where anyone can use them while developing their DAO. With these tools and the knowledge that comes with them, anyone will be able to quickly launch a product-driven gaming DAO. Publishing voting and metadata standards could even be a push towards standardizing crucial data points to allow for better interoperability between projects. Even more products & services developed by Proto Automata beyond the scope of the Catalyst fund will also be published, some on open source platforms and others as paid subscriptions. We want to build a great DAO, and in doing so we want to empower other DAOs to be just as great.

ProtoAutomata.com is currently forwarded to the parent company's website - Metapproach.co - which is under construction. Once completed, the newest Metapproach intellectual properties like Proto Automata or Sequential Squares will have their own pages that go into greater detail on project development and product rollout. We are happy to share the preview access code with the Catalyst community, though, so you can track our marketing development process in real time. That password is:

SamusBelmont

At time of submission the homepage is poorly formatted but contains some promotional text for Proto Automata. The next minor update will be tidying the format and moving the Proto Automata information to Metapproach.co/ProtoAutomata. Before the Catalyst vote begins we will post an early draft of Proto Automata's Green Paper on the website, which we will update once it is completed over the following weeks.

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

Proto Automata will not just provide Cardano developers with powerful tools to create and manage DAOs, it will be an example of an innovative way to use DAO technology to develop unique, useful products that can offer layers of value and enjoyment.

The primary focus in the six month development runway we're hoping to fund with Catalyst is bringing "additional not yet existing tools to give Cardano a distinct advantage." We are an exceptionally creative team and we're great at making games. We also believe gamification will only become a more powerfully driving force in the continued digitization of global commerce and entertainment. The Catalyst team is quite insightful to recognize that DAOs will likely drive the next major innovations in the blockchain space. The gaming industry presents the distinct advantages Cardano DAOs need when making the most of Cardano's impressive capabilities distributing digital goods & services to a tech-savvy audience on a global scale. The video game industry might be Cardano's best path to true mass adoption, and operating game studios as DAOs might be a particularly efficient way to pursue this.

With positive reception, Proto Automata can repeat this model many times over to develop new games, as well as other products, especially entertainment products that require creative direction. With every new game and every NFT release, Proto Automata will add increasing value to the blockchain gaming space, helping further establish its legitimacy in the emerging digital economy. The point of this fund, though, is to improve the development of all DAOs on Cardano, and more DAOs achieving higher standards of management & distribution only enhances these effects. Proto Automata provides a replicable model for a variety of DAOs, particularly those working on creative products that can incorporate direction from their communities, but perhaps its greatest value is in the operations automation the team will develop. This includes:

A basic open source DAO management platform published by ADAO
Effective community engagement models
Innovative product management frameworks
Comprehensive governance guidelines
Direction with distribution
Intuitive voting mechanisms
Demo game

Once the runway is passed and the DAO is successfully launched, over time it will undoubtedly incorporate more innovative features, as well as adding in more basic features that are expected from established tools like funding mechanisms for new DAOs, fundraising for common goals, options for physical DAOs, collaborations, altcoin support, etc. Anything Proto Automata develops for its own use can be retooled by Metapproach for whatever platform it best fits.

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

Aha! is a particularly innovative product management software suite that facilitates an extremely efficient and digestible approach to managing large projects. With the Aha! Ideas service, we're able to setup meaningful data relationship with our users. Their own description says it allows companies to "crowdsource feedback, engage your community, and analyze trends — so you can prioritize the best ideas". This tool will help us automate user feedback while easily keeping members involved in company direction and decision-making at the highest level.

Measuring a project's benefits to the greater Cardano ecosystem gives a powerful meaning to the project's success, but it can be challenging to quantify how a single project impacts an entire blockchain, let alone comparing one project's impact to every other player in a highly anonymized space. Collecting accurate numbers in a decentralized environment is tricky, especially without cutting into what will need to be a fairly tightly scheduled sprint cycle.

Once funded, each team member will spend one day researching a different aspect of Cardano DAOs to establish the most accurate baseline we're able to without diverting all of our attention to researching the industry landscape.

One team member will research the amount of ADA coming from DAO transaction fees at the time of funding.
One team member will research the number of DAOs that use Cardano as their governance/management chain.
One team member will research the number of DAO toolsets/frameworks available for DAO Ops that exist or are in development.
One team member will research the number of DAOs working on gaming products vs the number of blockchain-based gaming products operating as completely privatized entities.
One team member will research the amount of ADA being spent on gaming-related products.

After six months of development, each team member will follow up on their research to measure any changes. This should align with the completion of our Catalyst outputs. Moving forward, the way these research responsibilities are shared across the team may change, but Proto Automata will continue to collect these data and publish the metrics.

Output tracking is where the Aha! software suite will really shine for Proto Automata. The project boards under a product seamlessly integrate between departments to maximize inspiration and collaboration. It also has a project management framework, Aha! Develop, that gives Atlassian a run for their money. Nearly every item under every module can be selectively published to team members with different roles, or to shareholders tracking production, or even made publicly visible through links. These tools will allow us to establish and publish quality KPIs.

We will be pursuing 7 major outputs spread out over six months.

A basic open source DAO management platform - work will begin immediately upon funding and within one month the framework should be established to start posting models and guidelines at https://www.TheADAO.io/
Effective community engagement models - work will begin immediately upon funding and within two months these models should be in use promoting Proto Automata and posted to the DAO management platform
Innovative product management frameworks - work will begin immediately upon funding and within three months these frameworks should be setup to begin laying out the first Proto Automata game development projects; detailed guidelines to help any DAO setup a similar framework will be posted to the DAO management platform
Comprehensive governance guidelines - work will begin immediately upon funding and within three months these guidelines should be clearly laid out, guiding Proto Automata's operations moving forward; these guidelines will be published to the DAO management platform
Direction with distribution - work will begin immediately upon funding writing smart contracts, metadata, and the necessary proprietary code for Proto Automata's blockchain operations, all of which will be documented into guidelines that will be published to the DAO management platform within four months
Intuitive voting mechanisms - work will begin within two or three months of funding, whenever development of the distribution code is far enough along, on a UI that facilitates token-verified account-bound voting, allowing for versatile voting capabilities without overcomplicating the transactional nature of blockchain-based systems; these tools should be published to the DAO management platform by the end of the fifth month
Demo game - work on a demo game will begin immediately upon funding to showcase the team's development abilities, which should be completed by the end of the six-month runway; assets from this demo game will be published to the DAO management platform for game studios' and aspiring developers' R&D efforts

Beyond Catalyst, upgrades will be made to the DAO management platform, making it even easier for people to start a DAO on Cardano by automating some of the key processes in these outputs, like distribution and governance.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

Our team has experience developing successful products in blockchain and gaming including Unbounded.Earth, Adagotchi, ADAO, The Silk Toad, and more. All team members are already doxxed from other projects, and the newest to the Cardano ecosystem has been building here for over a year. We all bring a unique skillset as well as a unique perspective on the value blockchain technology brings to the wide world of product development.

Part of the point of building this platform is bringing awareness and convenience to compliance in the creation of blockchain-based digital goods. Proto Automata will be a registered US company with DAO tax election, owned by Metapproach, a US C-Corporation. Compliance and proper management of funds will be a legal necessity for Proto Automata. Nonetheless, having a team of seasoned entrepreneurs, including a product & operations analyst who has consulted a Fortune 500 and a DAO-experienced attorney who is a member of the Association of Corporate Counsel, there should be no worry of mismanagement of any development resources.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

This proposal thus far has gone into great detail on its technical goals, some of which are somewhat experimental in nature. The proposal has also outlined Proto Automata's approach to product development, project management, data collection & observation, as well as a host of DAO features.

The ultimate goal looking at the biggest picture for Proto Automata is to launch a game development studio DAO with impactful marketing that feeds useful tools to ADAO, an open source DAO management platform, making it easier for new DAOs to build on Cardano.

These goals should be considered complete upon the following conditions:

The game development studio DAO will be launched once it is filed as a registered DAO elected LLC in Wyoming.
Marketing content will be generated and maintained by an experienced and highly capable team member, and additional funding will be allocated for advertising campaigns. This is an ongoing process, but the first major milestone would be completion of brand development followed by the launch of the first advertising campaign. SaaS solutions like eClincher and Aha! Ideas provide live metrics for marketing impact.
The DAO management platform has several deliverables, which effectively make up most of the funding milestones for this proposal.
Ongoing in-house research on the Cardano ecosystem will track trends in the space, and comparing these data to Proto Automata's financials & KPIs should give an idea of the project's overall impact. We want to publish this information to make it easier for new DAOs to build on Cardano.

More details on tracking completion of the project's outputs to be funded by this Catalyst proposal can be found in "[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?" and "[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery."

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

Proto Automata Catalyst Milestones Over 6 Months

1 - Basic Interface Published @ ADAO

Month 1
Success =

barebones platform live on website

2 - Effective Community Engagement Models

Months 1-2
Success =

marketing management systems established
detailed models posted to the DAO management platform

3 - Innovative Product Management Frameworks

Months 1-3
Success =

Aha! product, project, and data platforms established
first game project timeline mapped
detailed models posted to the DAO management platform

4 - Comprehensive Governance Guidelines

Months 1-3
Success =

establish a safe and compliant business registered as a Wyoming DAO elected LLC in the US
clearly establish protocol for DAO members, particularly US citizens, to participate in legitimate Regulation Crowdfunding to freely accept profit share from the DAO
detailed models posted to the DAO management platform

5 - Direction with Distribution

Months 1-4
Success =

clear standards are set for smart contracts, NFT metadata, and any other required blockchain code for Proto Automata to realize its game development timelines
first NFT release is prepared and tested, ready to deploy at launch
detailed models posted to the DAO management platform

6 - Intuitive Voting Mechanisms

Months 3-5
Success =

token-verified account-bound voting UI published to website
basic story element voting mechanism implemented
detailed models posted to the DAO management platform

7 - Demo Game

Months 1-6
Success =

demo game complete and posted to website as a Unity WebGL build
assets posted to the DAO management platform

See "[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?", "[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?", and "[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?" for detailed outlines on project management, implementation, and detailed breakdowns of outputs & goals.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

Deliverables will vary depending on the output, but they will be organized within the Aha! product management platform, which will be made available at least to DAO members (possibly to the public) to track progress. Deliverables will include game assets, smart contracts, or governance code, to name a few.

Documentation will be gathered along the way to accompany the toolsets published to ADAO, empowering more DAOs to build on Cardano. Documentation examples would include marketing tactics, business protocol guidelines, game development tutorials, and more.

We hope to achieve more than just a successful game development DAO with a robust, engaged, and happy community. We want to have a meaningful impact on public opinion of DAOs and blockchain technology in general, especially from gamers. When used correctly, this technology has so much to offer gamers and people who enjoy virtual hangout spaces. This is why we're happy to provide at least the foundational elements of this innovative business model on an open source platform for others to build from.

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

$25,000 - Producer Payroll

$30,000 - Designer Payroll

$25,000 - Blockchain Dev Payroll

$25,000 - DAO Operations Payroll

$25,000 - Marketing Director Payroll

$15,000 - Advertising Budget

Freelance Content Creation = $7,500
Product Placement = $5,000
Targeted Online Ads = $2,500

$15,000 - Overhead

Google Workspace (1 Year Plan) = $720
Aha! Roadmaps (1 Year Plan) = $5,940
Aha! Ideas (1 Year Plan) = $1,200
Aha! Develop (1 Year Plan) = $1,080
eClincher (1 Year Plan) = $1,890
DAO Registration = $2,100
$300 for Incorporation
$100 for Registered Agent
$500 for 1 Year of Mailbox
$1,000 to Establish Banking & Tax Compliance
$200 for Possible Taxes & Surcharges
Unforeseen Expenses = $2,070

$160,000 Total Budget

₳551,724.137931 @ $0.29/₳1

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Sterling Bond (X / Xeperu) -

Producer @ Proto Automata & CEO @ Metapproach Industries Inc., Owner of Unbounded.Earth

<https://www.linkedin.com/in/sterlingbond/>

Matt Stevens (Deluxe0111) -

Game Designer @ Proto Automata & Unbounded.Earth

<https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-stevens-b658608b/>

Dominick Garey (dagwell) -

Blockchain Dev @ Proto Automata & CTO @ Metapproach; Adagotchi; The Silk Toad

<https://github.com/dgarey>

Matthew Bowen (Tha_BDOGE_Father) -

DAO Operations @ Proto Autoamta & CGO @ Metapproach; ADAO; Deep Chain; Summon

<https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewkbowen/>

Justin Dean (crexthemage) -

Marketing Director @ Proto Automata & CMO @ Metapproach

<https://twitter.com/crexthemage>

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

Considering the amount of work that needs to be done, the level of skill required from each team member that will be essentially running an entire department on their own, and extra attention the community will require from everyone involved, the requested wages are relatively modest for these positions over six months. This agreement was only possible because all of these highly-skilled individuals have been involved in this product ecosystem and are extremely passionate about trying new things, delivering more quality products as a team.

The advertising budget is relatively low, but used wisely it should be perfectly adequate to get the ball rolling. As the budget outlines, this will allow for the development of quality web and video content utilizing up to $7,500 for 3rd-party freelancers, a handful of product placement opportunities in key publications finding the best deals we can get totaling up to $5,000, and up to $2,500 left for targeted ads on websites & social media.

The overhead is itemized in the budget with accurate pricing for all necessary operational tools to run an efficiently lean remote team, rounded up to $15,000 total to account for unforeseen expenses. Because this game studio is not bound to the same limitations most others are, such as a physical location stocked with expensive equipment, a modest investment in digital management tools can save a very large amount of money on typical overhead.

Ideally Proto Automata will be funded alongside the Sequential Squares Catalyst Fund 10 Proposal, securing 6 months of comfortable full-time focus from this team to innovative incredibly value open source tools for the Cardano ecosystem.

bookmarked!